Posted 8 years ago
rniederman
(346 items)
In addition to early wood and brass photographic apparatus, did I also mention a fascination with fossils? Shown here is a large, cut and polished section of a pliosaur humerus. Fossilized dinosaur bones are not overly rare but, as with anything, really great gem grade material (i.e. agatized specimens) is difficult to find. At the rare end of the spectrum is bone fossilized with pyrite. While pyritized fossils such as ammonites are commonly found, dino bones are the exception.
This nearly five inch pliosaur bone fragment is special because portions of it were pyritized over the course of millions of years of fossilization. Careful cutting and polishing brought out incredible detail from what would otherwise look like a plain rock.
Although about 150 million years old (probably late Jurassic), it has beautifully preserved cells (the irregular shapes). Most of the fossilized tissue is calcite while others are pyrite. The marrow (oval formation shown at the right) was completely displaced with pyrite. The second image is a close up of the cells showing the incredible detail of pyrite and calcite in the fossilized tissue matrix.
This example was found many years ago in the Ulyanovsk Volga region of Russia. A small cache of good quality pyritized bones were discovered in a few rock layers while some, like this specimen, were loose along the river.
Man of many facets !
Very cool. I am a dinosaur (and other prehistoric reptiles) fan myself.
Thanks, Thomas!
Absolutely stunning!
Amazing!!
Thanks, BB2!
Thanks, valentino97!
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racer4four
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iggy
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Thanks, Anik!
What a great post! When i was a kid, some pyritized brachiopods were found in some metamorphic schist near our home along the Connecticut River. A friend of my dad's brought some to show us and they were really cool - but also very distorted due to the metamorphic processes. Those were much older and so pyritized over many hundreds of millions of years.
Thanks, ho2cultcha! Any pyritized fossil is great. FWIW, earlier this year I picked up another pyritized ichthyosaurus vertebra fossil. It is one of the largest at roughly 5" in diameter … with vascular markings radiating out from the center like a star sapphire.
Thanks, Watchsearcher!